Evaluation of Masood's and Modified Masood's Scoring Systems in the Cytological Diagnosis of Palpable Breast Lump Aspirates

Masood's and Modified Masood's Scoring Index: An Evaluation of Fine Needle Aspiration Cytology of Breast Lesions with Histopathological Correlation

OBJECTIVE

As fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) is the primary tool for evaluation of breast lesions, it is essential to segregate lesions with low and high risk of malignancy. To address this, Masood proposed a cytological scoring system for categorization, Masood's Scoring Index (MSI), which was modified later (Modified Masood's Scoring Index [MMSI]). This study analyses the effectiveness of MMSI over MSI and assesses the concordance between cytological scoring and histopathology.

STUDY DESIGN

All breast FNACs over a period of 2 years were categorized based on MSI and MMSI by 2 reviewers independently. The agreement rate along with specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy were calculated. Correlation and concordance analyses between cytological and histopathological categories were conducted.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Out of 415 cases of breast FNACs, histopathology was available for 310 for which MSI and MMSI were evaluated. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value and diagnostic accuracy were 95, 100, 100, 97.6 and 98.3%, respectively. The difference between the concordance rate of MSI and of MMSI for various cytological categories was found to be statistically significant.

CONCLUSION

MMSI has a better concordance with histopathological diagnosis than MSI. MMSI can serve as a uniform standardized scoring system for breast cytology for better categorization of proliferative breast diseases.